Arms are there, too, against many difficulties and temptations; and a better understanding of the Church's teaching and of the liturgy which is the best standard of devotion for the faithful.
The blight of Scriptural knowledge is to make it a "subject" for examinations, running in a parallel track with Algebra and Geography, earning its measure of marks and submitted to the tests of non-Catholic examining bodies, to whom it speaks in another tongue than ours.

It must be a very robust devotion to the word of God that is not chilled by such treatment, and can keep an early Christian glow in its readings of the Gospels and Epistles whether they have proved a failure or a success in the examination.

In general, Catholic candidates acquit themselves well in this subject, and perhaps it may give some edification to non-Catholic examiners when they see these results.

But it is questionable whether the risk of drying up the affection of children for what must become to them a text-book is worth this measure of success.

Let experience speak for those who know if it is not so; it would seem in the nature of things that so it must be.